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Sunday, April 02, 2017

`What Kind of Books Y'all Like to Read?'

A bookstore
opened recently in a strip mall not far from our house. When new, the windowless
exterior wall and mansard roof were plastered with white stucco, which has turned
sooty and gray, as though smoke-damaged by a fire. The store is flanked by a
consignment shop and a chiropractor’s office. Inside, the owner, a woman of about
my age, greeted us from behind the counter: “What kind of books ya’ll like to
read?” That sounds like a straightforward question, but it’s tricky and best
left unanswered. I smiled and said, “We just want to browse.”

All the
walls are covered with shelves of paperbacks stacked horizontally and arranged by
genre and alphabetically by author’s last name. The owner has a painstakingly systematic
mind. Ninety percent of the stock is fiction. The only genre with its own sign
is self-help, which is a catchall for medicine, pop psychology, religion,
occult and politics. The largest single section is romance. I very much wanted
to find at least one book I would be willing to buy, even as a backup or a
gift. My youngest son, who accompanied me, had the same thought. For fifteen
minutes we scoured the shelves and the occasional unpacked box of books on the
floor, and found nothing. I felt guilty about this. Anyone who opens a
bookstore in today’s culture and economy deserves encouragement, but we came up
bupkes.

I thanked
the woman, she said she hoped we would come back soon, and we walked out the
front door. My son said, “I feel kind of sorry for her.”